Hi all — I'm a reporter involved with this video gambling story at ProPublica Illinois. The story mentions video gambling addiction may be on the rise. We're looking to learn more about that directly from people affected by it. If you or someone you know compulsively plays the video slot or poker machines anywhere in the state, please consider answering a few confidential questions here: https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/help-us-investigate-i...
By sharing your story, you'll be helping us understand this important and overlooked cost of video gambling expansion. Thank you!
Logan I don't have names for you but this story is spot on, I hope the Trib and local news stations pick it up.
Video gambling is totally amok in many parts of Chicago and its environs.
For people who haven't seen it in person: even regular Mom & Pop restaurants have video slots. Donut shops. Italian sandwiches. Bars. Imagine if Subway devoted a quarter of its restaurants to video slots. It's crazy.
And watching the people who play these games it's obvious it's not rich people, it's most often (IMO) fixed-income retirees. People who can least afford it.
I'm for legalized gambling but what's going on in Illinois right now is totally bonkers. Legalizing video slots and putting them everywhere is the second dumbest idea in Illinois since Mayor Daley sold off some of the highways.
It really is a blight. Everywhere you go (other than Chicago) there are sleazy-looking banners offering video gambling. Even unexpected places. Literally every strip mall I'm aware of has at least one, regardless of the income tier the strip mall targets. Even the mom & pop diner just off the highway now has its windows plastered with adverts for video slots and video poker.
Searching for video gambling will only turn up the dedicated establishments (it doesn't turn up that diner, nor many dozens of bars) but you can still see how ridiculous it is from searching any downstate community.
Family Diner - every window is now covered with gambling advertisements, but street view is from 2015, before they converted. Still useful for understanding how persvasive the spread is and the types of businesses that are converting to stay competetive.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.1329083,-88.2190425,3a,75y,6...
Forest Park (my home for less than a year now) voted to prohibit video gambling in November, two years after it had been voted in. I'm not sure what the impact has been, but perhaps it could serve as a model for other municipalities looking to do the same thing.
I know the owner of a relatively large family-run restaurant, and apparently the few video slot machines they have in a small back room make more profit than the food.
A good rule of thumb is that if an establishment is based on a name (like "Penny's" or "Dotty's") and doesn't have any other indication of what its business is (and obviously isn't a bar), then it's a gambling joint.
On an unrelated note, as a non-American, it's stunning to see how wide those roads are, how big those parkings are, and the amount of SUVs and pickup trucks. I mean, that's kind of the American stereotype, but it calls my attention to see that it's actually true. (Speaking about the last link in particular.)
Quote "At every key point, state officials made decisions that undercut taxpayers and helped the companies that market video gambling"
And that is one reason why I left Chicago. Both city and state are corrupt. I remember receiving an automated ticket for running a stoplight on a date when I wasn't even in Chicago.
I got a ticket for running a light in Chicago, but because I was from out of state, it took them 'extra long' to send me the ticket in the mail (their words when I called). By the time they had mailed me the ticket, the deadline to pay had already passed and the fine had doubled.
Yep. A related story about the sleaze in Chicago - Around 10 years ago, I received a parking ticket on a street, at a part where they had no parking meters! Part of the street had meters, I pulled up to a slot and noticed it had no meter. One week later, I got a 50 dollar ticket. There was no way I could know whether the parking slot was free or not, since I was just visiting and not a Chicago resident.
Later I came to know that the city of Chicago was undergoing a dubious parking privatization initiative round about then.
I can beat that one :) My car was stolen in 2001. I lived on the north side, off of the lake (Uptown - not the best, but not the worst part of the city). I reported it stolen. In 2002 I got a parking ticket by mail from the far west side of the city, where I've never been to this day.
That’s just another reason why Chicago’s population is lower today than 25 years ago, and Illinois has lost population for five years straight. Corruption and bad policies are rampant, so why start a business or stay there if you can leave?
I am in support of legalized gambling but the way it is done in states like Illinois and New York (my state) just preys on problem gamblers and is indeed a money grab by the state.
The arguments for making gambling illegal or restricted in these states are all nullified by the state running them. They offer games with bad odds, in poor facilities. New York sued daily fantasy sites saying it is "dangerous and addictive" but then reeled that all back once they agreed to get a cut of the action.
I used to work for my uncle who had video games, pinballs and video slots. It was semi-regulated years ago but then more rigidly controlled. And yes there people who ranged from addicted to casual as were the drinkers at the bar.
It's not the machine it's the thrill though. MY uncle was contacted by a man's wife who said he dumped his entire paycheque into the slots. My uncle took a slot machine to the man's house, set it for free play but the man was not interested in that. The devices people use for gambling slots, dice, cards, don't matter it's not what it is it's the result people desire.
I've seen people win $100,000 get it in cash and dump it all back in and be happy. Or others who spend $1,000 to win a $50 bonus pot, a very common thing.
I can even somewhat tell what models of slots are in the picture in the article shows a (left) IGT/Spielo Prodigi VU, (middle)a WMS BB2 and (right) a Bally AP-1 V32.
Just a statistical nit: the article states that there are more non-casino video gaming machines in Illinois than in any other state in the country, including Nevada. While that's true in absolute terms (based on ProPublica's figures from this article) the opposite is true in per-capita terms. There are more machines in Illinois than in Nevada, but there are also more people in Illinois than Nevada by a factor of 4, and, consulting the table in the article, you'll see that there are not 4 times more machines in Illinois. In fact, per-capita, according to this table, Illinois ranks last, not first.
(I agree with I think most of this thread that these things are a blight.)
In a kind of dark way, this is great news. It will be useful for other states, as well as the city of Chicago, to have an example use case for NOT legalizing video lottery.
Heck, even gas stations around my area have signs stating "VIDEO GAMING" like it will draw in patrons with nothing better to do.
The convenience shop down the street from me (Chicago outskirts) routinely has people occupying seats and looking dejected, but not actually playing any of the gambling games when I'm there.
I don't like the term "Video Gaming". I play video games. I'm a bit of a gamer. But I am in no way any sort of gambler. Conflating the two makes one look less a dangerous vice, the other more of one. Video games and gambling terminals are totally different things.
(Yes, the lootbox debate, but you know of what I speak).
The knock-on effects from this poorly considered legislation are ridiculous:
The legalization of video gambling also triggered another shift in the state’s revenues, one that led to a drop in education funding. While the bulk of video gambling revenue goes to fund Illinois Jobs Now!, most of the state’s casino revenue flows into the Education Assistance Fund, which provides grants to public elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities for building projects and other expenses.
But when video gambling became legal, gamblers no longer had to travel to the state’s 10 casinos to place a bet. Between 2013 and 2017, state revenue from casinos in Illinois declined 15 percent, from $462 million to $393 million, as income from video gambling machines grew nearly 900 percent, from $30 million to $300 million, state records show.
The cannibalization of casino revenue contributed to a 22 percent decline in the amount of money going to the Education Assistance Fund between 2013 and 2017, leaving fewer dollars for the state’s struggling schools.
Seems more like a tax distribution problem than anything else. Casino revenues went down $69 million, but video gambling revenue went up $270 million. Seems like a good deal tax wise.
I can kind of understand how people get addicted to Video games, spending all their days and nights behind a screen. I dont understand how you can do the same feeding money into a random machine with flashing lights and nice sounds non stop.
I'm a trustee on the board of a very small village in Illinois. There was a vote to allow the gaming before I got on the board, and only one vote since then to approve a new license for an establishment. I argued the income-vs-sleaze ratio was lousy, but was out-voted. I wish I'd had this article and its facts to back up my more emotional reasoning for not liking it.
Video gambling is indeed a blight, even if it is profitable, but this article only makes it more depressing to see just how worthless (or actively punitive) it is to all but the companies that apparently wrote the original legislation.
I lived in Capital City / a Central Illinois for a year, and I was blown away with how many establishments hosted gambling video games. Granted, most bars were divey, but even the ones that weren't (i.e. the nice bars in town) still keep a little section in the corner that looks like a degenerate's arcade.
I should also mention that housing is _cheap_ in this area. I'm talking 2br1ba house with garage and front/back yard, one mile from downtown for $600. So, renting a large commercial property was likely cheap as well.
While there are clearly communities where this is a problem, I've lived in Chicago, now I live in the suburbs and still work downtown, and honestly outside of OTB and the Casinos, have never actually seen a video gambling machine in Illinois. So, this is not a state wide blight, but more of an isolated problem in various places.
As noted in the article, you most likely live in an affluent suburb. They don't have these things in Lake Forest or Barrington. On my way to work, on a short strip of road that runs through Hoffman Estates there are two Shelby's within a 1000 ft of each other. They are almost always empty apart from one or two patrons, yet they have been there for a couple of years now - I assume the few problem gamblers in the immediate area are literally supporting these places. Even if they were generating significant revenue for their municipalities, the whole enterprise is immoral.
The main east-west street corridors through the outer west burbs (Lake St, North Ave, Roosevelt Rd, etc) are choked with them. Addison for example has one every 5 feet.
I left the state before the gambling and concealed carry changes took place.
My last visit was approx two years ago and it was impressive how much worse everything seemed to be. Highway rest stops with "no firearms" stickers affixed to their glass doors, the highly visible kind with a red circle and diagonal stripe over a black pistol. Those stickers are all over the place now, it felt like I must be surrounded by lethal weapons, what a miserable way to live.
The prolific gambling dens and video gambling machines just made everywhere feel like an urban ghetto wasteland on top of it.
I'm thrilled to have escaped before it got so much worse. The corruption was already exceptionally bad. The monetary costs and stress I endured throughout my adult years spent there on police encounters, traffic fines, parking tickets, towing fees, it's completely insane.
Living in CA is an absolute dream in comparison. We may have high state taxes but I'm not constantly getting antagonized by a corrupt government desperate to raise money through continuous public contact. There are also extremely affordable parts of CA, I own desert property that's fully paid for just a couple hours from LA and the Pacific coast, an hour from Big Bear. The yearly property taxes are equal to a fancy dinner, 5 acres and a cabin for the price of a car. People obsess over the housing problems of very specific internationally-desirable elite-class pockets of CA, there's plenty of CA to go around.
<storytime>
The first time (and only in over 10 years) I ended up in traffic court in CA was for excessive speeding, it was for 90+ in a 55 - a mandatory court appearance. The police interaction was more entertaining than stressful, and when I went to court the judge started the session by announcing that the state had requested all fines be pushed to their maximum due to some temporary political budget problems. She then announced, that in protest, since the county doesn't find it appropriate given the general economic downturn, all penalties issued that day would be at the absolute minimum. I paid less than a hundred bucks for that ticket.
This situation, from start to finish, would never have happened in IL. I would have had police with guns drawn on me when pulled over, searching my vehicle after smelling nonexistent marijuana. The judge would have been a dickhead obsessed with people removing their hats in his courtroom before wiping out their savings accounts.
Anyone have an examples outside of Vegas and maybe the first two Connecticut casinos where bringing in legalize gambling actually derived on the promise of raising projected revenue benefiting the wider economy?
Gambling is zero sum, so within a closed system, it can never be beneficial. The only way it can be beneficial is if it extracts value from outside of a particular locality and distributed the losses externally. Why vegas or macau can succeed is because most of the gambling in these cities is done by people outside of vegas and macau. If gambling in vegas was confined only to the people of vegas, then vegas would collapse as a portion of their citizens' lives are ruined.
Though I'm personally against all types of gambling, I believe in individual rights and a person's right to waste their money as they see fit. However, I don't think governments should be so closely tied to it and I certainly don't think governments should be depending on it for funding of any sort. They should tax the companies involved in gambling, but they should be "in bed with them" so to speak. And I don't think state governments should be involved in lotteries either. Lotteries should be purely private and the government should tax it. I don't think a moral or sane government that truly cares about and represents their citizenry could be involved in lotteries or gambling.
illinois should concentrate on not worrying too much about what consenting adults do in their spare time. Until recently, even happy hours were illegal. Illinois should concentrate on fixing the state so that people are not fleeing in droves. Legal gambling is the last issue that the state should be concerned with.
The problem is that "consent" isn't a binary, it's on a continuum. When people are bombarded nonstop with advertising for video gambling, eventually some of them will take the bait. And those who do will be the ones more susceptible to the inherent lure of gambling, and as such the ones most likely to be addicted to it.
Video slot machines are particularly odious IMO. They are carefully designed to addict people. It's sort of like, don't ban tobacco, but maybe ban the worst tricks and chemicals cigarette companies use to make the product more addictive.
While not video gambling directly, but there are plenty of those places around. Chicago really is obsessed with scratch off tickets and gambling in general. It is pretty sad. It's amazing to see the same people on a regular basis just throwing away money like that. 20 dollars at a time.
[+] [-] lojaff-PPIL|7 years ago|reply
By sharing your story, you'll be helping us understand this important and overlooked cost of video gambling expansion. Thank you!
-Logan Jaffe [email protected]
[+] [-] ordinaryperson|7 years ago|reply
Video gambling is totally amok in many parts of Chicago and its environs.
For people who haven't seen it in person: even regular Mom & Pop restaurants have video slots. Donut shops. Italian sandwiches. Bars. Imagine if Subway devoted a quarter of its restaurants to video slots. It's crazy.
And watching the people who play these games it's obvious it's not rich people, it's most often (IMO) fixed-income retirees. People who can least afford it.
I'm for legalized gambling but what's going on in Illinois right now is totally bonkers. Legalizing video slots and putting them everywhere is the second dumbest idea in Illinois since Mayor Daley sold off some of the highways.
[+] [-] tofof|7 years ago|reply
Searching for video gambling will only turn up the dedicated establishments (it doesn't turn up that diner, nor many dozens of bars) but you can still see how ridiculous it is from searching any downstate community.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/video+gambling/@40.116774...
Here, the same chain has locations barely a thousand feet from one another, and they're not even the only dedicated dens in that immediate area.
Bar - doesnt show up when searching 'video gambling': https://www.google.com/maps/@40.117862,-88.2040812,3a,75y,97...
Family Diner - every window is now covered with gambling advertisements, but street view is from 2015, before they converted. Still useful for understanding how persvasive the spread is and the types of businesses that are converting to stay competetive. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.1329083,-88.2190425,3a,75y,6...
[+] [-] clucas|7 years ago|reply
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-vk...
[+] [-] O5vYtytb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyinghamster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quotha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robmiller|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lp251|7 years ago|reply
Emma’s/lacys/etc was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this headline- they are everywhere.
[+] [-] iqy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jostmey|7 years ago|reply
And that is one reason why I left Chicago. Both city and state are corrupt. I remember receiving an automated ticket for running a stoplight on a date when I wasn't even in Chicago.
[+] [-] bduerst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sn41|7 years ago|reply
Later I came to know that the city of Chicago was undergoing a dubious parking privatization initiative round about then.
[+] [-] bbarn|7 years ago|reply
This was in the paper ticket era.
[+] [-] bleriot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moorhosj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deads|7 years ago|reply
https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/
[+] [-] selectodude|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jopsen|7 years ago|reply
This is pretty much a privatized tax collection for deliberately preying on the weak.
I mean do the reverse math, if gambling revenue had met expectation, how much money would the poor have had to burn on gambling?
[+] [-] specialp|7 years ago|reply
The arguments for making gambling illegal or restricted in these states are all nullified by the state running them. They offer games with bad odds, in poor facilities. New York sued daily fantasy sites saying it is "dangerous and addictive" but then reeled that all back once they agreed to get a cut of the action.
[+] [-] dghughes|7 years ago|reply
It's not the machine it's the thrill though. MY uncle was contacted by a man's wife who said he dumped his entire paycheque into the slots. My uncle took a slot machine to the man's house, set it for free play but the man was not interested in that. The devices people use for gambling slots, dice, cards, don't matter it's not what it is it's the result people desire.
I've seen people win $100,000 get it in cash and dump it all back in and be happy. Or others who spend $1,000 to win a $50 bonus pot, a very common thing.
I can even somewhat tell what models of slots are in the picture in the article shows a (left) IGT/Spielo Prodigi VU, (middle)a WMS BB2 and (right) a Bally AP-1 V32.
[+] [-] technofiend|7 years ago|reply
In my humble layman's opinion it's the risk taking. There's no risk in playing a free machine and there's no reward since it won't pay anything.
[+] [-] tptacek|7 years ago|reply
(I agree with I think most of this thread that these things are a blight.)
[+] [-] elhudy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vibrato|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pssflops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|7 years ago|reply
(Yes, the lootbox debate, but you know of what I speak).
[+] [-] djhworld|7 years ago|reply
http://kachingfilm.com/
It's a documentary about video gambling machines in Australia, quite eye opening to say the least....
[+] [-] cwal37|7 years ago|reply
The legalization of video gambling also triggered another shift in the state’s revenues, one that led to a drop in education funding. While the bulk of video gambling revenue goes to fund Illinois Jobs Now!, most of the state’s casino revenue flows into the Education Assistance Fund, which provides grants to public elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities for building projects and other expenses.
But when video gambling became legal, gamblers no longer had to travel to the state’s 10 casinos to place a bet. Between 2013 and 2017, state revenue from casinos in Illinois declined 15 percent, from $462 million to $393 million, as income from video gambling machines grew nearly 900 percent, from $30 million to $300 million, state records show.
The cannibalization of casino revenue contributed to a 22 percent decline in the amount of money going to the Education Assistance Fund between 2013 and 2017, leaving fewer dollars for the state’s struggling schools.
[+] [-] babaganoosh89|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rb808|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klenwell|7 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/09/magazine/chrome-shiny-lig...
I suspect a lot of the techniques mentioned in the article made their way from slot machine design into mobile games.
[+] [-] eyepulp|7 years ago|reply
Video gambling is indeed a blight, even if it is profitable, but this article only makes it more depressing to see just how worthless (or actively punitive) it is to all but the companies that apparently wrote the original legislation.
[+] [-] dgzl|7 years ago|reply
I should also mention that housing is _cheap_ in this area. I'm talking 2br1ba house with garage and front/back yard, one mile from downtown for $600. So, renting a large commercial property was likely cheap as well.
[+] [-] chicagobob|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yborg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larzang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tofof|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newnewpdro|7 years ago|reply
My last visit was approx two years ago and it was impressive how much worse everything seemed to be. Highway rest stops with "no firearms" stickers affixed to their glass doors, the highly visible kind with a red circle and diagonal stripe over a black pistol. Those stickers are all over the place now, it felt like I must be surrounded by lethal weapons, what a miserable way to live.
The prolific gambling dens and video gambling machines just made everywhere feel like an urban ghetto wasteland on top of it.
I'm thrilled to have escaped before it got so much worse. The corruption was already exceptionally bad. The monetary costs and stress I endured throughout my adult years spent there on police encounters, traffic fines, parking tickets, towing fees, it's completely insane.
Living in CA is an absolute dream in comparison. We may have high state taxes but I'm not constantly getting antagonized by a corrupt government desperate to raise money through continuous public contact. There are also extremely affordable parts of CA, I own desert property that's fully paid for just a couple hours from LA and the Pacific coast, an hour from Big Bear. The yearly property taxes are equal to a fancy dinner, 5 acres and a cabin for the price of a car. People obsess over the housing problems of very specific internationally-desirable elite-class pockets of CA, there's plenty of CA to go around.
<storytime>
The first time (and only in over 10 years) I ended up in traffic court in CA was for excessive speeding, it was for 90+ in a 55 - a mandatory court appearance. The police interaction was more entertaining than stressful, and when I went to court the judge started the session by announcing that the state had requested all fines be pushed to their maximum due to some temporary political budget problems. She then announced, that in protest, since the county doesn't find it appropriate given the general economic downturn, all penalties issued that day would be at the absolute minimum. I paid less than a hundred bucks for that ticket.
This situation, from start to finish, would never have happened in IL. I would have had police with guns drawn on me when pulled over, searching my vehicle after smelling nonexistent marijuana. The judge would have been a dickhead obsessed with people removing their hats in his courtroom before wiping out their savings accounts.
</storytime>
[+] [-] hermitdev|7 years ago|reply
You already were, but now it's legal for law-abiding citizens to have them.
[+] [-] blang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porpoisely|7 years ago|reply
Though I'm personally against all types of gambling, I believe in individual rights and a person's right to waste their money as they see fit. However, I don't think governments should be so closely tied to it and I certainly don't think governments should be depending on it for funding of any sort. They should tax the companies involved in gambling, but they should be "in bed with them" so to speak. And I don't think state governments should be involved in lotteries either. Lotteries should be purely private and the government should tax it. I don't think a moral or sane government that truly cares about and represents their citizenry could be involved in lotteries or gambling.
[+] [-] wenc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derekp7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exhilaration|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vasilipupkin|7 years ago|reply
illinois should concentrate on not worrying too much about what consenting adults do in their spare time. Until recently, even happy hours were illegal. Illinois should concentrate on fixing the state so that people are not fleeing in droves. Legal gambling is the last issue that the state should be concerned with.
[+] [-] i_am_nomad|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] currymj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulie_a|7 years ago|reply